Avoidance
by DrWorm
Summary: Casey's been avoiding some very big issues in his life. Like seafood and what kind of pen he uses. Slight Casey/Zeke.


Notes: Written for the contrelamontre open-ended story challenge on livejournal, though I'm not sure how open-ended this thing really is.

Casey didn't really like to eat seafood anymore. It generally reminded him of the aliens. 

Delilah didn't get it. She didn't quite understand why he would always take the detour around Red Lobster or why he was conspicuously absent the day his Biology class took a field trip to the aquarium. "It's over, Casey. It's been over. Can't _you get over it? Everyone else has." _

Delilah didn't really understand a lot of things about Casey. Casey was okay with that. Delilah didn't have the patience to understand; that was just the kind of person she was. It wasn't that she was stupid, exactly. It was just that she was selectively stupid. She had dealt with the aliens the only way she knew how: sharing her grief and her trauma with everything that had ears. Casey couldn't do that. He wasn't outgoing like Delilah, and he didn't think that talking to others would help him to overcome that odd prickly sensation of fear in the tips of his toes whenever he locked eyes with anything vaguely squidlike. Avoidance was key. Who needed sea creatures anyway? 

Casey also didn't use BiC pens anymore. They reminded him of Zeke. He'd switched to Uniballs which, while more expensive, wrote smoother and took a longer time to run out of ink.

He didn't avoid BiCs for the same reasons he avoided seafood. It wasn't fear that tingled in his toes whenever he saw a cheap white pen with a blue cap… it was more of a gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach that wasn't quite hunger and wasn't quite jealousy, but rather a combination of the two mixed with some sort of inconvenient teenage lust. Not that Casey had thought about it much. No, no over analysis of feelings of homoeroticism for Casey Conner, no sir. Whenever he felt that way, he'd just pick up a pencil instead or grab Delilah and invite her out to lunch at the Olive Garden which, coincidentally, was all the way across town from Red Lobster. They ate at the Olive Garden a lot. 

Casey was not thinking about pens or aliens the day that Zeke stepped up behind him in the hallway and snapped one of his belt loops. Casey was walking very slowly, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the fluorescent lights and how cool the insides looked and whether it would be productive to try to get a stepladder and take a few shots, just as an experiment. He didn't realize anyone was behind him until he felt a slight tug at his hip, heard the muffled snap of denim as a strong finger had hooked the loop and pulled, and felt Zeke's voice in his ear, warm and slightly rusty like his GTO, "Hello, handsome. See any aliens up there?"

Casey's mouth had opened and he'd felt the heat of a blush creep up his neck, partly out of humiliation and partly from the surprise of being called handsome. "I… was just looking at the lights…" He trailed off, feeling stupid, but Zeke nodded with serious scientific interest.

"You're right, Casey. They could be anywhere. Tell you what… you get a ladder, I'll get a hammer, and then we'll smoke the bastards out." For a moment, Casey could only stare at him with wide eyes, not entirely sure whether he was kidding or not. But then Zeke laughed and clapped him on the shoulder and Casey felt like a Grade-A idiot. "You're gullible, but it's part of your charm. Want to get some lunch?" He stopped and sniffed the air. "Do you know what they're serving today?"

"Baked fish sandwiches," Casey said glumly. He had planned ahead and packed his lunch. "I don't have any money."

"No, problem. I'll treat." Zeke smiled again, rumbled and lopsided and attractive in all of his slacker-turned-football star glory. He took a few steps forward and extended his hand back as an invitation. "C'mon, Casey. Let's get something to eat."

And Casey decided maybe it was time to stop avoiding some of the more important things. 


End file.
